Daughters Open Dads' Doors

Staff Utne magazine

| November / December 2005

Joe Kelly sees great hope for social change in the relationship
between dads and their girls. Kelly is the co-founder of Dads and
Daughters (DADs), a national nonprofit group that encourages
fathers to actively and deeply engage in the lives of their
daughters and galvanizes fathers and others to transform pervasive
cultural messages that devalue girls and women. Kelly says he has
seen men change as they get to know their daughters; more than
wives, mothers, sisters, or any other woman, daughters show a man
how to develop his feminine side. A good father can learn
compassion, tenderness, listening, and support from his girl and
take those lessons into the rest of his life.